Today’s first-reading-account of the safe return of Tobiah with his wife Sarah, and the subsequent curing of Tobit’s blindness, overflows with great joy, celebration, gratitude, and consolation. As such it represents a foretaste of heaven, mirroring the joy and celebration that will be ours when we pass from this life into that Eternal Home prepared for us. Nevertheless, this joyous outcome was anything but certain back when Tobit was praying for death and Sarah contemplating suicide. In this, their lives bear witness to God’s loving providence working in and through the daily circumstances of our lives—especially those situations where he seems absent and we feel lost, abandoned, and hopeless. Sarah and Tobit are not unique and though our own lives may, at times, seem a total mess and leading nowhere, our faith assures us that God is at work and if we but trust him, he will weave the disparate threads of our lives into the beautiful tapestry that is our true and redeemed selves. And so we can exclaim with Tobit: May God’s holy name be praised throughout all the ages, because it was he who scourged me, and it is he who has had mercy on me.